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Friday, April 22, 2016

I'm so freaking excited today!!! When I started the Advocare Herbal Cleanse on April 9th, I set a goal. . . that goal was to see the 170's on the scale before I leave for KY on April 27th (this coming Wednesday). 179.8 (my scale only does even numbers behind the decimal) would be fine. I didn't care. I just wanted to see 170's. My long term goal was to see 176 as that would be 35 lbs lost since I started Advocare. I would have reached that in August if I hadn't got sick. Life since then has been rough and the weight crept on. I wanted to hit 176 and reassess where I wanted to go and how I wanted to get there. So I started the cleanse at 188.2. Yesterday was tough day and I didn't eat dinner. I wasn't even all that hungry so I guess it didn't matter. I never skip meals, but it happened. I didn't get home till close to 9pm and I wasn't feeling up to making something. This morning I got on the scale not knowing that to expect. I could have easily gained. The body is funny like that. Not eating isn't necessarily a "good" thing where the body is concerned. But I saw this on the scale. . .

GOAL!!!!! I'm stunned. I'm shocked. I got on that dang scale probably 4 times. It said the *exact* same thing each time. (Maybe one day I'll set the date on that thing huh?). That's a loss of 2.6 lbs from yesterday. So I'm not sure that this will remain and I could blow up tomorrow. But I saw it. I saw the 170's!!!! Whoop whoop!!!! It feels good. Now I'd like to hold that and actually be in the 170's on Wednesday morning when I leave. I hope I can, but I also know that I have a few things coming up that might make it challenging. If in fact this is a bit of a fluke then it will certainly be a challenge. If it's not, then there might be hope. It's funny how I can gain 2-3 lbs overnight and it can take days to get it off. It's very very rare that I drop more than 1 lb in one day. But boy does it feel good!!! Happy weeekend everyone!

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

I haven't been posting because I've been waiting for my cleanse to be over.

On Sat April 9th, the hubs and I started the Advocare 10 Day Cleanse. You can do this as part of the 24 Day Challenge or you can do it solo. As you know in Jan we did do the full challenge. The recommendation is to cleanse every 90 days. Some people do the challenge every 90 days. We have been eating pretty much like you do on the 24 day challenge 90% of the time, so we just did the cleanse. I'm going out of town next week and we found 10 days where we didn't have any events.The consists of 10 days of clean eating. You *eat*. You don't starve yourself. You eat three meals a day and 2-3 snacks. It's all clean, avoiding things like dairy, sugar, alcohol, condiments, bad carbs. . . we eat very little carbs. You can have whole grain breads, but we don't. I know for myself that I will have better success if I don't. But I do eat grain like quinoa every day. Since I run, I really need the carbs to keep that energy level up. I eat three snacks as I have that extra/optional one after dinner, before bed. That's my snacky time and I just can't give that one up. But snacks are clean: fruits and nuts. That kind of thing.My start weight was 188.2.My hubs start weight was 207.8

My final weight this morning was 182.6. That's a loss of 5.6 lbs. I'm happy with that. I wanted more, but I did the best I could and this is what my body gave me. I lost half inch off of: hips, waist and both thighs, for a total of 2 inches lost. I really want to see the 170's soon so I'm going to keep up with the clean eating and see if I can get there before I go to KY next week. My hubs however ended up in ONDERLAND!! His final was 199.8. I don't think he's been in the 100's in his adult life. He was much larger before I met him and lost weight prior to meeting me in 2006. But I know that he has always been in the 200's the whole time we've been together. He's pretty excited! He also lost a total of 2 inches: 1 from both the chest and hips. He's kind of shrinking before my eyes. I think he's loving it. He was resistant to any kind of "cleanse" or limiting food groups/eating before. But he's loving the reaction he's getting from people and I know he feels better.The thing I love the most about the cleanse and clean eating in general is that my weight is more stable. I don't have wild fluctuations of going up a few pounds in *one* day. Here's my daily weight since the start of the cleanse (from the bottom up!)

You will notice that my fat % went up. But gosh darn, those monitors are something else. Any change in hydration can affect it. It seems to take much more than 10 days to see results. So I'm not too worried about that. I've been stuck since Saturday morning at the exact *same* weight. That's becoming a bummer. And even more of a bummer is that it's my TOM starting today. So I suspect I will fly up 3 lbs in a day or two from that bloat. That's one thing clean eating can't control. The bloat from Aunt Flo! Ha! I thought since I haven't posted in a while, that I'd share some images from this weekend.First - my horse, Eli is lame. I don't know what he did and I don't know if it's related to his neck arthritis. But there's no riding right now and I don't know when I'll call the vet yet. I leave town next Wed so I may address it when I get back, unless it gets worse. This is a sad face selfie. I was excited to try a horse selfie with my new phone because the front camera is wide angle. It's much easier to fit a horse head in the photo!

On Saturday I took my nephew to his baseball practice. His Dad was working and his sister was sick, so his Mom couldn't take him. I love that boy! He's so funny and so well behaved.

He's a true farm boy and he loves working with his dad in the field (his dad does field work for someone when not working his *real* job @ John Deere). So on the way home from baseball practice we stopped to check on my husband in the field. Have I mentioned on here that my husband farms? Probably not, cause in reality farming sucks and it sucks all your money down the drain.

Sunday morning, before my husband went to the field, we went for a run. Whew - he's just too fast for me. I really have to up my speed to run with him. I know it's good for me, but as summer comes and the temperatures go up, it's getting harder. I hate hot weather running. But I sure am proud of myself when I'm done and see that speedy pace! :)

On Sunday, my nephew was at my Mom's house and she sent me this photo. She said he noticed the tractor a mile away and starting getting excited that it was my hubby. I thought this photo was about the sweetest thing I've seen in a while.

Hope all is well with everyone that reads this! Post a comment once and while and say hi! :)

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Yesterday, April 2nd, was our 5 year anniversary. We talked about going out of town, but time got away from us and we didn't make any plans. We decided to have a day out locally. I asked my parents to give Sophie her mid-day medicine so we didn't have to come home. One thing we wanted to do was run the loop around Forest Park in St Louis. There are two tracks, one paved and one gravel. Both are just over 5.5 miles. I cannot tell you how far we've come in 5 years. . . neither of us ran back then. Driving to St Louis to run is not something either of us ever thought that we'd do. But that's what we did! It was a windy day (there were wind advisories) and Forest Park has more hills than we have at home. It was challenging and I walked briefly to get up a hill. The wind was getting me and affecting my breathing and I was just so done. But I didn't walk long and I picked it up again and kept going. Thankfully my husband stayed with me otherwise I'm sure I'd have walked more. I was kind of thinking "whose idea was this?" and I actually said that at one point near the end. But soon it was over and we had ran 5.75 miles! It was actually fun for the most part. Forest Park is just full of people being active and that's inspiring to keep going.

Forest Park is HUGE at 1,293 acres, it's larger than central park. It's the 7th largest urban park in the US. The St Louis zoo is in Forest Park. So we changed clothes at the visitor center and decided to go to the zoo. The St Louis zoo is free, but you have to pay to park if you don't park along one of the streets in the park. We paid to park cause it's more secure and I look at it as a donation to the zoo. The zoo is really really fabulous and there is often random chatter about charging admission. I hope they never do. It's so great that it's free!We saw the penguins :) We see them more often than the other animals because the zoo is open during Christmas at nights. It's called Wild Lights and the penguins are one of the only animals you can see when you go. Of course you're going mostly for the Christmas light display.

St Louis Zoo just got a Polar Bear named Kali (it's pronounced like Kuli and he's a boy). I don't think he's been there a year. He was available to see during Wild Lights this past year but he wasn't too cooperative while we were there. This time we had *perfect* timing. We arrived right as they were feeding him. They toss his fish (?) in the water and he finally jumped in and started eating. It was so fun to watch such a big bear swim around. I even took video!

Late we walked by to catch him outside. He's soooo gorgeous.

I love all things monkey! So of course we hit that section of the zoo. This guy was just hanging out. :)

This guy was hanging out on the platform playing with the crowd. People were nodding their heads and he'd nod too. He even poked his hand on the window at children. It was really cool. I wish I could have got closer, but the crowd was too large.

The St Louis zoo has quite an elephant population. I love watching them as they are so big and fun to watch walk around.

We rode the train for he first time in years. It isn't free, but for $8 you get an all day pass and can get on or off wherever you want. We rode it once all the way around the zoo. What we didn't know was that the train took you past some elephants that aren't on display to the public. One of them in the youngest one at the zoo and it was so adorable. But I didn't have my phone ready to take a photo.

After the zoo we stopped at Ballpark Village for some drinks. It's across the street from Busch Stadium (the St Louis Cardinals' stadium). We sat at the outside bar. It might be April but it was chilly. We moved near a fire for our last drink. . . it wasn't very crowded so it was really nice to enjoy the place without the normal crowd during baseball season. The fact that we were wearing Cardinals attire yesterday was a fluke. :)

The Anheuser Busch emblem above the fire is really old and was originally in a different city near a train track. We think that's why it's black in some parts. It's not from the fire below - that's for sure. On the way home we stopped for dinner at Peel Brewing Company. We've never been and have wanted to go for some time. They are known for their wood fired pizzas. My husband ordered a flight of beer. I had told the waitress that I wanted the Blood Orange beer on the flight, but she misunderstood me and brought me a full size beer. Thankfully I liked it.

I was told their Mac & Cheese is fantastic and that was the truth! We got it as an appetizer. It was amazing. Of course we eat pretty low carb and haven't had mac & cheese in forever, so that certainly helped with how impressed we were. But I really think it was just *that* good.

We ordered the Maple Bourbon Pork pizza. It was good but the toppings were kind of scarce. We weren't all that impressed. Our expectations were really high so that didn't help. It was good but we aren't anxious to go back any time soon. We honestly prefer Papa Murphy's take and bake pizza. I'm not sure if that sad or funny.

We stopped at the grocery store and got some cake for dessert. I chose this one cause our wedding color was pink. :) In the past we've ordered small cakes from the bakery that made our wedding cake. That bakery makes amazing tasting cakes, but this was certainly yummy enough.

And since this was all about our 5th anniversary, here is a photo of our amazing wedding cake. Not only did it look fantastic, the taste was amazing!!!!! Everyone commented how good it was - that it wasn't just pretty. Wedding cake has a reputation of being dry. Ours actually had filling in most of the layers. Totally yummy!!!